Tolkien: Film Review

Tolkien: Film Review

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Lily Collins, Col Meaney, Derek Jacobi
Director: Dome Karukoski

The Tolkien biopic is a quietly muted film about comradeship above all else.

It seems apt, given how Tolkien's most famous books are about fellowship, and Karukoski's at pains to repeatedly emphasise this point throughout.

Starting at a young age in J R R Tolkien's life, Hoult takes the mantle of the ultimately famous writer, whose early life is blighted by degrees of poverty and tragedy in equal measure.

When he gets into King Edwards College in Birmingham, he finds his outsider ways alienating him from others at the school, and thrusts him into fights. But gradually taken in under the wing of three fellow students, Tolkien forms a bond and group with fellow artists.

But their world is torn apart by the arrival of the war to end all wars.

Tolkien is a prestige pic, that's slightly hobbled by pacing and a degree of stiffness throughout.
Hoult isn't quite strong enough as the author, but he does convey an earnest turn, and his romance with Lily Collins' Edith Bratt appears to work better on the page than it does on the screen, imbued as it is with a sense of malaise throughout.

More successful is the fellowship that crops up between the college mates. It's here the pre-war bonds and tragedies emerge and flourish. Certainly when Derek Jacobi's linguistics professor shows up later in the piece, the film bursts vibrantly into life, instilling a degree of passion into proceedings that's been occasionally lacking throughout.

However, there are some truly impressive visual touches in the war sequences.

Clearly inspired by what's seen in the shadows and how the mind works, Karukoski brings menace to flames, giving them faces on the fields of war. Tendrils are added to smoke plumes that plague the trenches, delivering a real feeling of both menace and Tolkien's imagination at work.

It's here the film soars, lifted by by small flourishes aimed at providing plenty of insight into how Tolkien's mind has worked. It's just a shame that this relatively traditional biopic doesn't take more opportunities to soar, and grounds its fantastical author in a kind of stifling approach that's ultimately and sadly disengaging.